Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Hi all – I’m coming back to China for a visit from the beginning of June. I will spend some time in Beijing and it would be great to see you if you are there. I am thinking of visiting CUPL one day. Send me an email if you’re going to be around and maybe we can arrange to meet up. Jon

Welcome to my English language and culture blog. This blog originated as a resource for students of my English writing and contemporary British culture courses. I ran these courses at the China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) in 2007. I hope the material available here will be useful to other students of English too. Please do leave a comment and let me know what you think of the site. Best wishes, Jon

The first part of the examination will be this Wednesday, as I explained in the last class. Just to remind you, I expect to see that you have chosen a question from the list of questions (see the last post), that you have done some independent research (you can show me your notes to demonstrate this), that you have brainstormed to generate diverse ideas (again, I expect to see notes to show this), that you have chosen a central claim for your essay and that you have begun to plan it.

In order to be very clear then, what you need to show me in the class on Wednesday is the following. Please bring everything to class. You do not need to hand it in, but I want to see it and to discuss it with each one of you.

We’re getting near the end of the course, so I think it’s time to begin talking about assessment. I’m not going to set you exams, instead I’m going to ask you to write an essay – or tw essays if you are following both the writing and the Blair’s Britain courses.

I’m going to give you a wide choice of questions – you can see them here:

If you’re looking for material to practise your listening skills, you might like to look at the BBC’s Reith Lectures.

Reith was the first Director General of the BBC, and the Reith Lectures are held every year in his memory. For each year’s lectures, an expert is chosen to speak on a topical subject.

This year’s lecturer is Professor Jeffrey Sachs, an economist, who is speaking on the challenges faced by the world’s economy in the decades to come. His second lecture was given on Wednesday in Beijing, at Beida. He will give a total of 5 lectures.

You can also listen to past lectures. I have been listening to the very interesting lectures on the philosophy of trust given in 2002 by Onora O’neill.

Recordings of the lectures are accompanied by transcriptions, so you can follow the text while you listen, and the lecturers generally speak very clearly, so I think these lectures are ideal for practising listening.

If you do listen to some of the lectures, please leave a comment to this post to tell me what you thought of it and whether it was useful.